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\^.*>,^ 



AGRICULTURE OF THE UNITED STATES, 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED 14th APRIL, 1841, 



BEFORE THE 



American institute, 



NEW YORK, 



BY HENRY^ COLMAN, 

COMMISSIONER FOR THE AGRICULTURAL SURVEY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



-^ 



V 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE INSTITUTE. 



H. A. CHAPIN & Co., New York, 138 Fdlton Street ; 

OTIS, BROADERS & Co., Boston; 

KIMBLE & SHARPLESS, Philadelphia. 




1S41 



5^1 

.Cti 



TO DANIEL WEBSTER, 

SECRETARY OF STATE OF THE UNITE D ST ATES ; 
A FARMER OF MASSACHUSETTS, 

AND jL 

A FIRM FRIEND OF NATIONAL INDUSTRY, 

WHOSE DEEP SENSE 

OF THE 

IMPORTANCE OF THE AGRICULTURAL INTEREST 

AND OF AN 

IMPROVED AGRICULTURE 

IS JUSTLY APPRECIATED 

BY THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY, 

.THIS ADDRESS IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED BY 

HIS FRIEND AND SERVANT, 

THE AUTHOR. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen 

OF THE American Institute, — 

I AM happy to meet here many of the friends of Agriculture of 
the State of New York, and of other parts of the country. But 
for an unfeigned distrust of my abihty to do justice to the occasion, 
there would be no abatement of this pleasure. With liberal minds, 
however, honesty and heartiness of purpose in a good cause will 
secure a candid, I may hope, a favorable hearing. 

In some parts of the country rude monuments are found composed 
of stones merely thrown together, which are supposed to have been 
erected by the aborigines, in order to mark some public object or 
event not now known. It is understood that, in forming these erec- 
tions, individuals were accustomed, when they passed them, to lay 
each a single stone of a larger or smaller size on the pile, which 
was thus continually increasing. After such an example, I am glad 
to bring my humble contribution to a cause which alike concerns 
us all : Though it be a mere pebble which I cast upon the heap, 
and be lost among the splendid contributions of others, it will 
testify my sense of duty and my desire to do what I can for the 
common object and, at the same time, may serve to increase 
the general mass. The ant-hill is composed of atoms : the hive is 
filled by the contributions of thousands of minute laborers : the 
ocean is swollen by the thin vapors, condensed on the cloud-capt 
mountains, hundreds of miles in the interior. One of the most 
beautiful and one of the sublimest views of the divine Providence is 
in the fact, everywhere established so far as our observation extends, 
that nothing in the divine creation is lost ; nothing stands alone ; 
nothing is without its use. Every part of nature, from the largest 
to the smallest, from the planet to the atom, from the sun which 
irradiates a system, to the finest beam of light which strikes our 
vision, from the rain-charged clouds, which deluge a wide territory, 
to the minutest dew-drop, which sparkles in the opening flower ; 
all have their action and use, and are bound together by a reci- 
procity of dependence and advantage. 



The matter for our discussion on this occasion is Agriculture, and 
particularly the condition of Agriculture in the United States. 
From the extent of this subject my observations can be only general 
and cursory. Many volumes, indeed, would be required thoroughly 
to discuss it. 

The intimate connection of this subject with the business and 
pleasures of life, as well as with man's intellectual and moral im- 
provement, can hardly be overstated. From the earth man derives 
his supplies : without its products he could not live. These pro- 
ducts are the fruits of cultivation. K he were left to depend on the 
spontaneous fruits of the earth, his subsistence must be uncertain 
and meagre ; and only a small portion of the earth would be 
inhabited. It is a law of his being that he must toil for his bread. 
This toil, under those restrictions, which the healthful exercise of 
every physical and intellectual function demands, is conducive to 
animal and mental vigor and strength. 

The Commerce of the country, for more than three-fourths of the 
objects about which it is concerned, is dependant upon agriculture. 
Manufactures are mainly concerned in the use and the preparation 
for use of the products of agriculture. Our naval power and our 
military defences can only be maintained by these products. The 
labor of such a country as ours must be almost entirely, directly or 
indirectly, concerned in this great business. It is the source of 
national wealth ; it involves the comforts, the happiness, and the 
welfare of the whole people. It is the first step in the progress of 
civilization. Its improvement and extension indicate the progress, 
which civihzation has made. In the shepherd and wandering 
state, where tribes of men are under the necessity of continually 
changing their position, or in the savage state, where men rely for 
a precarious subsistence upon fishing or the chase, civihzation never 
can, under such circumstances, make any advancement. The 
plough should be the first missionary to be sent among the heathen 
nations. Until men are in some measure humanized and brought 
into a fixed position, a condition of mutual dependence and advan- 
tage implied by the knowledge and practice of agriculture, 
Christianity is hkely to have little hold upon their regard and affec- 
tions. 

It is not necessary to extend these general remarks. I might 
speak of the favourable bearing of agriculture on pubUc morals ; 



and, in a free country, of its intimate connection with public 
liberty. Upon that large portion of mankind, whose home is on 
the sea, whose capital is easily transferable, or whose business or 
profession may be pursued with equal advantage in various places, 
the state has an imperfect hold. But, with respect to those of the 
agricultural classes, who have a direct stake in the soil, whose 
home is fixed, and who, separate from all pecuniary interests, are 
tied down by innumerable associations to the place of their resi- 
dence, the state has the strongest pledge of their attachment and 
devotion. 

The highest duty of every good government should be the pro- 
tection and advancement of its agriculture. As that flourishes the 
whole country flourishes ; as that declines the country must suffer 
and decline. The commercial interests of the country constitute an 
immense interest. Most persons familiar only with the business 
and grandeur of cities are disposed to consider trade and commerce 
as the greatest interests of the country. I am not inclined to under- 
value these interests, especially in a city where they have been 
pursued with so much intelligence and enterprise as they have in 
this. 

I am not indisposed to deny the immense advantages which they 
render to Agriculture, and their intimate connection with the pros- 
perity of the whole country. Compared with Agriculture, however, 
they are a mere circumstance in that prosperity. In Great Britain, 
the country of all others most distinguished for the extent and 
wealth of its Commerce, singular as the fact may seen, the value of 
the manure annually apphed in the cultivation of its soil, exceeds 
that of the whole amount of its foreign trade.* Without Agricul- 
ture Commerce could not subsist ; but if the whole Commerce of the 
country were to be at once extinguished the substantial welfare of 
the people might remain untouched. If the whole country, with its 
seventeen millions of inhabitants, and to that millions were added, were 
thrown at once upon their own resources, and every inlet and outlet 
closed up, there need be no want of the supplies and comforts of 
life. The nation might still be advancing without slackening its 
speed, in abundance, prosperity, and power. 

Of all countries, to none is Agriculture more suited, no where 
can it be more successfully prosecuted than in the United States. 
* M'Queen's Statistics of the British Empire. 



8 

With a climate extending through sixteen degrees of latitude in the 
most favored zone, there is scarcely a vegetable, or fruit, or cereal 
grain, which may not in some portion of it be successfully cultivated. 
With an unmeasured extent of soils of unsurpassed fertility, every 
product conducive to comfort, health and luxury, is, under the 
blessing of Heaven, at the command of the cultivator. With land 
to be had almost for the asking, and where a year's labor will 
purchase for any industrious man an ample farm ; %vith a perfect 
security, in the free states, of the fruits of one's own industry ; with 
an exemption from all burdensome taxation ; with markets as good 
as any part of the world presents ; with lines of intercommimica- 
tion, rapid, easy, and certain, which abolish all distance and which 
tend to equalize the advantages of the whole country ; and with a 
government spreading its broad shield of protection over all, and 
whose weight, like that of the element in which we live, no man 
feels, unless he opposes it, and in the exemption from internal dis- 
cord and foreign war, there is no example of a nation more favored. 
The fact that every sober and industrious man may become a free- 
holder of the soil, may have a home which he may call his own — 
a word so fragrant and delicious to the heart — and by reasonable 
toil and frugality, may rear, educate, and comfortably endow a 
family, and this without hindrance, or fear of oppression or autho- 
rized robbery and pillage, we witness a privileged condition of 
mankind, an encouragement to enterprise, labor and good conduct, 
the counterpart to which has never been found. In other countries 
the condition of labor has been a condition of restraint, servility, 
and degradation. Let us thank God, that there exists in our country 
no other rank than moral rank. Here, without prejudicing his 
neighbors interest, and where the success of any one brings equal 
good to the community as to himself, every man, may aspire to the 
highest attainments, which his ambition can ask. In the old coun- 
tries discussions are continually going on which oppress the bene- 
volent heart with shame and grief, as to the means by which popu- 
lation shall be checked, early marriages discouraged and prevented, 
and the condition of the poor rendered still more wretched by the 
want of those domestic ties and affections, which are the sources of 
the purest happiness and the most powerful security of virtue. 
Centuries must elapse before such questions can have any interest 
with us. We have more than three hundred and fifty millions of acres 



of public lands to be disposed of; and not a state in the Union has 
reached a sixth part of the population, which it is capable of sus- 
taining in abundance and luxury. When to this we add the in- 
creased production, which must come from an enlightened and im- 
proved Agriculture, even where Agriculture has been deemed among 
us to be most enlightened and improved, we may give ourselves 
little concern for a period so far distant in the coming future, as that 
when our nation shall be crowded for room ; when, under free in- 
stitutions, those who labor shall want bread ; and the birth of a 
child be regarded as a curse to the state. Under an improved 
Agriculture in Scotland, we are assured upon the best authority, the 
crop of wheat within twelve years past, has doubled its produce upon 
an acre, having risen in many cases under systems of permanent im* 
provement, from twenty-four to fifty and even sixty bushels. A few 
years since the average crop of wheat in Great Britain was rated at 
eighteen bushels per acre, it is now stated on good authority to be 
twenty-five bushels. The crop of Indian corn, in the best cultivated 
districts of our own country, until within a few years, has not 
averaged more than thirty bushels to the acre. I believe the time 
is not distant when one hundred bushels per acre will cease to be 
regarded as extraordinary. 

I had intended to go into some statistical returns, by which the 
magnitude of the agricultural interest of the country would be 
exemplified. But I fear it would too severely tax your indulgence. 
These statistics, too, are necessarily imperfect ; and it would avail 
little to say, that the cotton crop of last year amounted to twenty-two 
hundred thousand bales, averaging three hundred and fifty pounds 
each, or in other words seven hundred and seventy millions of pounds ; 
that the annual crop of sugar in Louisiana is seventy millions 
of pounds ; that the amount of tobacco actually consumed in the 
country exclusive of exportation, exceeds one hundred millions of 
pounds and amounts to twenty millions of dollars ; that the value 
of the annual shearing of wool is more than twenty-one millions of 
dollars ; and that of the product of wheat, barley, corn, rye, and 
other grains, no calculation has approached the actual amount. 
The inquiries directed to be made by the Marshals in taking the 
last census, if executed with even moderate care, will furnish the 
most important information on these subjects.* The results ascer- 

* See Appendix, Note A, 



10 

tained astound us by the long array of figures which represent them ; 
but they are nothing compared with that mine of wealth which lies 
buried at our feet, and which the plough is destined to uncover. 
What a bountiful mother is this earth ! What dutiful child has 
sought her favors, on the only terms on which she ever should 
grant them, that did not find her kindness unrestricted and ample ! 
In a country like ours, as yet comparatively new, and with a 
vast extent of land just rescued from the wild beasts and wild men, 
that roamed over it with undisputed sovereignty, it cannot be 
expected that much improvement in agriculture should have been 
made. The great object has necessarily been, in most cases, pro- 
duction and immediate returns. Where immense tracts of land lay 
untilled, men have used up the soil without regard to its improve- 
ment, or the continuance of its fertility. Excepting in those soils, 
which are annually overflowed and enriched from the contributions 
of other fields, no soil under perpetual cultivation can retain its 
fertihty. This has already been demonstrated in some of the oldest 
states, where cultivation has been highly stimulated, the products 
carried from the land, and no portion of them returned for its 
restoration and nourishment. In the new states likewise, the fer- 
tility of whose soils to the confident and reckless seems ineshausti- 
ble, this must ultimately be the case unless the principles of modern 
husbandry the principles of a rotation of crops and seasonable 
manuring be understood and adopted. The laws of nature can 
neither be transcended nor violated with impunity. Avarice and 
selfishness in every department of life are sure of a just retribution. 
The laboring horse must have his full manger and his comfortable 
bed ; or he will cease to labor. To exhaust the soil by cropping, 
and to be continually taking away without any replenishing, is a 
husbandry the fatal consequences of which are certain. In some 
parts of the country the soil is exhausted with perfect recklessness 
and with a determination on the part of the cultivator, that when it 
ceases to yield abundantly, he will emigrate ; but there are few 
cases in which emigration is not a serious evil. If the accoimt 
were fairly made up and the disadvantages of removal contrasted 
with the advantages of a fixed location, having all those multiplied 
conveniences,' comforts, and improvements, which are found asso- 
ciated only with a long established residence, the policy of such 
calculations would be as strongly condemned by interest as by con- 



11 

slderations of comfort and moral good. The evils of removal and 
emigration in our country, its physical sufferings, its social priva- 
tions, and its moral trials, in a majority of cases, are necessarily 
great ; and can be compensated only by extraordinary advantages. 
It is happy for us that, under a faithful and enlightened agriculture, 
the fertility of a soil may not only be kept up but continually 
increased. It is a truth in which the old states have the deepest 
interest, that their impoverished lands may in many cases be 
restored and their vt'aste and irreclaimed lands redeemed and made 
productive w^ith greater ultimate advantages and pecuniary profit 
than a farm can be taken up and managed on the richest prairies 
of the Far West. Let me state a case within my own knowledge. 
In the neighborhood of two or three populous villages an observing 
man purchased seventy acres of wet-meadow, the product of which 
was comparatively worthless. The land was estimated at not more 
than twenty dollars per acre. At an additional expense not exceed- 
ing twenty dollars per acre he drained and manured it ; and obtains 
from it at the rate of three tons of good hay to an acre, worth, at 
the average price which hay has maintained in the vicinity for 
twenty years past, fifteen dollars per ton. From one measured acre 
he sold the product of one cutting for one hundred dollars, at twenty- 
five dollars per ton.* We are yet, even in the old states, little ac- 
quainted with our own resources. I have no prejudice against the 
new states. Far from it. I admire their unrivalled magnificence, 
their superlative beauty, and their exuberant fertility. They are for 
the young and enterprising ; for those, who have no means of 
planting themselves in the old states ; or for those of foreign coun- 
tries, who fleeing from the yoke of oppression and degradation 
which has for centuries galled their necks under the despotisms of 
the old world, come with their wives and children to our shores 
where they may breathe the air of freedom and enjoy the rights of 
men. Heaven prosper the virtuous, patriotic and industrious among 
them, as he prospered our pilgrim fathers. But at the same time I 
am for the improvement of the old states. I am for doing well 
here, before I go further under the expectation of doing better, with 
all the uncertainties attending a removal and the sacrifices, and the 
privations which, under the best circumstances it must involve. We 
have not yet begun a systematic and liberal course of improvement. 
* See Appendix, Note B. 



12 

With respect to the small experiments which have been made, and 
many have come under my observation, I have not found a single 
instance conducted with judgment, skill, perseverance, and liberality, 
•which has not been amply compensatory and successful. Your own 
county of Columbia presents many examples of such productive 
improvement. Lands in this county, which twentj^ years ago were 
scarcely worth twenty dollars, under a course of permanent im- 
provement, are now readily sold at an hundred dollars per acre in 
whole farms, and pay a large profit at that. 

Next to the abundance and cheapness of land, the w^ant of capital 
to apply to the cultivation of land, has to a degree retarded the im- 
provement of our Agriculture. This has not however been uni- 
versally the case. The Southern portions of the country, under the 
stimulus of a fictitious capital, and with the flattering allurements of 
high prices and quick returns, have forced production to an extraor- 
dinary extent. But this, as managed, has been an unnatural pro- 
cess, which I shall not now discuss. In the Northern states, how- 
ever, where capital has been more sound, yet, with all their charac- 
teristic shrewdness, the Yankees have been exceedingly wary of 
applying capital to the improvement of Agriculture. They have 
been engaged in raising all kinds of stock but live stock. They 
have been willing to risk their capital in every sort of bank but a 
bank of earth, where alone the investments and discounts, if not 
dazzling and extravagant, are sure and liberal. The alluring and 
specious prospects of sudden accumulation, which at one time seem- 
ed to have goaded the whole nation into frenzy, and the profligate 
abuse of credit, that most powerful element in human aflf'airs, so 
productive and useful in its healthy operations, perverted all sober 
calculations, and separated the accumulation of more from its proper 
and only legitimate coniiexion, the improvement of what we have. 
Of speculations in land we had enough ; and in a corresponding 
measure the cultivation of land seemed to have been checked. At 
one time every man was willing to sell his farm. Many, in their 
passion for a good bargain, seemed ready, after the Russian fashion, 
to convey their wives and children as a part of the live stock of the 
farm. The only harvest upon which they calculated in these cases 
was to come from the pockets of the purchaser. 

It is but recently, for example, that conventions were assembled, 
the press teemed with encouraging publications, and everywhere 



13 

men's mouths were full of the culture of silk. It was gravely cal- 
culated that trees would not grow fast enough for the wants of the 
community and that even our common farmers would be able to 
change their tow-frocks for ^silken robes, made perhaps after the 
fashion of the Roman toga. But it was soon found that all this 
had its origin and its end in the price of multicaulis and the sale of 
mulberry trees. The actual production of silk, destined, I confi- 
dently believe, to become a most important and profitable branch of 
American husbandry, did not enter into the calculations of most of 
these persons. Their eloquent eulogiums upon its culture were for 
another end. The reasonable gains of wholesome industry united 
with systematic frugality were disdained under the dazzling expec- 
tations of sudden accumulation. Men crowded around the moun- 
tain, struggling up its ascent, and heedlessly thrusting down, if 
necessary to their own success, all who stood in their way, as if its 
glittering summits and its brilliant glaciers were of solid silver. The 
terrible avalanche, which has rolled down, tumbling many from its 
giddy heights and crushing thousands upon whom it fell, has taught 
the country a lesson of rebuke and wisdom necessary to their pride, 
and which, at least for a while, must calm the insanity of an 
unbridled avarice and ambition. The season of mental and moral 
disease through which the country has passed, and from the dreadful 
eflfects of which it is now suffering, will prove a signal blessing if it 
shall be instrumental in giving, especially to the rising generation, 
more just views of duty, happiness, and good ; if. in withdrawing 
them from their hazardous and too often dishonest and corrupting 
pursuits of gambling and speculation, it shall reconcile and attach 
them to the pursuits of honest toil in cultivating the earth. Such a 
pursuit is sure to bring with it, a reasonable competence and the 
satisfactions of conscience, and at the same time present the widest 
room for the cultivation of the domestic affections, and the quiet and 
delicious pleasures of this true philosophy of life. I certainly would 
not encourage any extravagant expectations ; or represent agriculture 
as likely, under the best circumstances, to yield enormous profits. 
Expectations of that character are vain and baseless, when applied 
to any of the business of life. Large fortunes are sometimes sud- 
denly and unexpectedly made ; but we must not be deluded by 
extraordinary examples. In the lottery of life we are sure to hear 
of the few who draw the highest prizes j but nothing is said of the 



14 

multitudes, who draw only blanks. I do not mean to compare 
agriculture to the operations of chance. Trade partakes much 
more of chance than agriculture. But I mean to say that the capi- 
tal may often be invested in agricultural improvements so as to meet 
all reasonable expectations of profit ; and when the security of such 
investments is considered, they will be justified by the soundest 
discretion. 

The various parts of the country are so diversified in chmate,soil, 
and condition that it is difficult to speak of American agriculture as 
a whole. I have merely glanced at its productiveness. The amount 
to which it has yet to rise, the most expansive imagination cannot 
define. There is another remark to be made, which in its present 
condition is applicable to no other country, which is that our coun- 
try from within itself is capable of supplying everything, which the 
earth can yield, essential to subsistence comfort and luxury. Its 
various parts, diversified as they are in condition and production, 
are all essential and helpful to each other. In their union there is 
strength. In a kind intercourse and the free interchange of their 
different products God grant that they may cultivate a spirit of 
good will and mutual sympathy, and for years and centuries to come, 
keep the chain which binds them together, bright and unbroken. 

The great object of the enlightened and patriotic of our country 
should be the improvement of its agriculture. I have already said 
that its agriculture is the great source of its wealth. What is 
wealth? Without referring at all to the opinions of political 
economists, I answer, it is that which is essential to the subsistence 
and is conducive to the comfort of man's being ; such as shelter, 
food, and clothing, or that by which these may be produced or 
procured ; such as lands, houses, seeds, manures and tools, and 
above all, labor, by which these are made productive of the neces- 
saries and comforts of life. Money is not wealth. We have pretty 
nearly settled this question, upon which, hitherto opinions have been 
different from what they now are, or are soon likely to be again. 
With the view of getting rich, we have tried pretty extensively 
the domestic manufacture of money ; and, after the production of 
many pictured millions, it has left us poorer then when we began. 
The Secretary of the Treasury in a late report has stated, that the 
losses to the country within a few years by the failure of banks ; that 
is, our money factories has exceeded four hundred millions of dollars. 



15 

This was before the great explosion, which has scattered such wide 
spread ruin and brought so much dishonor upon the country. But 
where has it gone ? It has hterally gone out ; because it had no 
substantial being. It pretended to represent that which did not 
exist. It resembled the autumnal fogs, which gather in low places, 
or on the banks of rivers, reflecting, as the streaks of light dart up 
in the eastern horizon, numberless beautiful colors and waving forms, 
and transforming the spreading valley into an inland sea. But, in a 
few hours, it is scattered to the four winds, from whence none but the 
hand of a mighty power can regather it. How would it have been 
with us if the same amount, the product of industrious labor, had 
been represented by cotton, wool, rice, tobacco, flour, wheat, grain, 
live stock, manufactured goods of prime necessity and innocent luxury, 
or by manufacturing establishments, increasing under the application 
of skill a hundred told the value of the raw materials upon which 
they operate ; or by improved and cultivated farms abounding in 
all the substantial comforts of life and by healthful and enlightened 
labor rendered continually more and more productive. This would 
have been real wealth which the true philanthropist might have 
contemplated with satisfaction ; and to which the rough hand of 
honest toil might have pointed with conscious pride. I dare not 
bring into the contrast the unmixed misery of disappointment and 
bankruptcy with which this system has flooded the community, 
the idleness, proflig-acy and corruption of morals, which it has 
brought with it, the shock which it has given to commercial in- 
tegrity ; and the disgrace which it has inflicted upon national 
character. 

The government is bound to protect and encourage all honest 
labor, for labor is its true capital ; labor is the only legitimate in- 
strument of wealth. I am no enemy to banks founded upon the 
only honest principle of banking, the certain ability to meet their 
obligations'promptly and according to their tenor. I am no enemy, 
but the friend of credit given as the encouragement to honest en- 
terprise and industry, and based upon a reasonable calculation of 
the probable gains and results of such enterprise and industry. But 
a currency which has no substantial basis to rest upon, and which, 
in too many cases, represents only a conspiracy against industry for 
the most selfish ends, and credit given for no other purpose, or 
applied to no other ends than those of speculation, and without any 



16 

of those sufficient securities by which commercial honor in all 
conditions of life should be protected, is among the worst species of 
gambling; it is the corruption of public morals and robbing of 
honest labor of its earnings. An individual purchases an acre of 
land to-day at a hundred dollars, and having done nothing for its 
improvement, on account of a redundancy of the currency, by which 
the value of money is reduced, and which is expanded or contracted 
at the pleasure or caprice of the money factors, sells this land a 
month or a year afterwards, for two hundred dollars ; does he confer 
any benefit upon the community ? Not the smallest, but most pro- 
bably an injury. Is the actual value of the land increased, or the 
community made richer by this advancement in price ? Not at all. 
But, on the other hand, if an individual takes an acre of land, cul- 
tivates, and enriches it, renders it productive, and actually produces 
a crop, he is the creator of wealth ; he is a benefactor to the com- 
munity ; in respect to its wealth, not only in proportion to the value 
of the crop he produces but in having put the land in condition for 
future production ; and greatly in respect to its morals — a gain 
always vastly superior to any pecuniary profits. 

Allow me, in this connexion, to direct your attention to what 
may be called the recuperative power of Agriculture, as the creator 
of wealth. Money has no power of self increase. Money in specie 
deposited in your chest, if you can keep it safely, at the end of a 
month or year will not have increased at all in value ; if in bank 
notes, though the lock of the chest may be unbroken, I cannot an- 
swer for it that it will not have been diminished. Agriculture ap- 
plied with skill and judgment in subduing, cultivating and enrich- 
ing the soil, not only enhances its present value and obtains an 
early return, but puts it into a condition of permanent productiveness 
and increase. But, in these strong recommendations of an improved 
agriculture and the increase of products, I shall be met with the 
objection, that in proportion to the increase of agricultural products, 
prices go down and their value is consequently diminished. My 
answer in this case is, that in a healthful state of the currency of a 
country, and where the standard of value is fixed and not liable to 
perpetual fluctuations, cost and value naturally adjust themselves 
and maintain a steady proportion. But I have a second answer. 
I estimate the prosperity of a countr}' not by a mere pecuniary 
standard, but by the general comfort and improved condition of the 



17 

middling and the laboring classes. This comfort and improvement 
of condition -will be in proportion to the cheapness and abundance 
of the necessaries of life. A productive and abundant Agriculture 
must form, therefore, the great means of their comfort and pros- 
perity. 

The perfection of Agriculture as an art consists in its produc- 
tiveness, qualified by the consideration of cost, and of the condition 
in vs^hich it places or leaves the soil. If the proceeds of the culti- 
vation are not sufficient fairly to meet the expenses, it becomes dis- 
couraging ; and may, with good reason, be abandoned. If in 
prosecuting it, the first returns repay the expenditures yet the soil 
itself becomes impoverished and cannot be recruited but at an ex- 
pense exceeding the value of the crop obtained, this husbandry is 
not to be commended. But when the land yields abundantly, the 
crops not onlj' pay the expenses of cultivation, but leave a net 
profit, and the land itself is in a course of gradual improvement and 
increased productiveness, such husbandry may be pronounced 
skillful and successful. The same remarks, which apply in this case 
to the cultivation of the land, apply in like manner to the raising 
and keeping of live stock and every other department of husbandry. 

The improvement of this art depends upon inquiry and knowledge, 
exactly as the improvement of any other art or science. It has 
been thought that practice was the only means, and all that was 
necessary, to constitute a man a farmer ; and scientific inquiry has 
been spoken of with derision. This ignorance and these prejudices 
are fast passing away. There are secrets in nature, which in the 
present condition of our faculties we may not expect to penetrate ; 
but in the progress of knowledge it has already happened, as we 
all know, that many operations of nature, which were deemed a few 
years since insoluble mysteries, are now made so familiar that 
we can only admire our own previous dullness of comprehension. 
More than this, too, in this case the Gordian knot has not been cut, 
but deliberately untied. Inquisitive minds should never be satisfied 
with present attainments, nor think they have gone far enough, when 
there is a possibility of going further. Nothing is more remarka- 
ble, when the subject is soberly considered, than the prejudice 
which has existed against science when applied to Agriculture. It 
is strange that men should admit the value of mind and of know- 
ledge in every other department of business but this. Why 
3 



18 

should Agriculture, involving many of the most profound inquiries, 
be an exception to the aids and advantages of science ? When we 
consider what art and science has already done for it, we cannot 
doubt that philosophy is yet here to extend her guiding hand, and 
to achieve many a splendid triumph. The progress of some of the 
natural sciences within a few years has been so great that they may 
almost be said to have been created. The Supreme Being has im- 
planted in the mind a strong desire after truth. It is the charac- 
teristic of a distinguished intellect to yearn after it as the stomach, 
famishing with hunger, pants for food. To seek after truth, there- 
fore, wherever we can find it, whether v^e go into the field as 
gatherers of the bending harvest, or as gleaners of a few scattered 
ears, is a duty to ourselves, and an act of reverence to the Father 
of our Spirits. He has made truth the natural aliraent of the soul, 
and inspired the noble minded with a thirst for it, which ever gains 
new ardor from indulgence. Of what is termed the vital processes 
in the animal and the vegetable worlds, we cannot form even a 
plausible conjecture ; but this should not discourage our inquiries. 
Before the discoveries of Harvey, the circulation of the blood "was 
an unfathomable mystery, and before the revelations of Franklin 
in electrical science the world did not dream of the nature and laws 
of that mighty ethereal fluid. 

Vegetable physiology, and organic chemistry, have been within 
a few years so much studied, soils and manures have been so care- 
fully analyzed, and their applications so frequently experimented 
upon and so carefully watched, that many principles, most impor- 
tant in their application to practical Agriculture, are as well 
established as the principles of astronomy and navigation, which 
enable the intrepid sailor to circumnavigate the globe, and to deter- 
mine his place and distance and course with entire precision, as 
well by the soft beams of the sparkling stars, transmitted from the 
profound depths of the heavens, as by the effulgence of a noon-day sun. 

One of the most distinguished botanists and vegetable physiolo- 
gists* in the world, by establishing the fact of the exudation of 
plants and the excretion from their roots of matter unfriendly to 
the successive growth of the same plant on the same land, has ex- 
plained the importance and necessity of a rotation of crops. 
Another individual,! standing in the foremost rank among the 
* De Candolle. + Liebig. 



19 

learned men of Europe, has given such explanations of the soils, 
the operation of manures, and the remarkable dependance of plants 
for their food upon the atmosphere and the rain, that should his 
theories be established by farther experiments, his book, as it has 
already been pronounced, will prove a new revelation in Agricul- 
ture, A distinguished scientific and practical agriculturist* in 
Great Britain, in view of what has been done and is doing, with all 
the enthusiasm of an ancient Greek philosopher, declares that 
" everything portends some extraordinary discoveries in Agriculture." 
May it be the happiness of this gentleman, himself an eminent, 
active and liberal friend of agricultural improvement, to be favored, 
like the ancient patriarch before his departure, with a sight of the 
glowing objects of his desires and hopes. 

American Agriculture starts in the race of improvement in. the 
enjoyment of singular advantages, having the benefit of all the im- 
provements and discoveries of the philosophers and practical agri- 
culturists of the old world. The Agriculture of Europe differs from 
that of this country on account of differences of chmate and soils, 
and by various circumstances in the social condition, character and 
wants of the people. But the great principles of vegetation and 
cultivation are every where the same. Their remarkable improve- 
ments in ;the redemption of unproductive, waste and wet-soils, in 
the irrigation of lands, in draining and sub-soil ploughing, in the 
composting and compounding of manures, in the use of mineral 
manures, and more especially in the improvement of their live stock, 
amounting almost to the creation of new races of cattle, sheep, and 
swine, will not only stimulate our exertions, but serve as examples 
for our guidance under the qualifications, which the pecuHarities of 
our situation require. 

The French and Germans, if their progress has not been as great 
as that of Great Britain, are now advancing, in a course of improve- 
ment in Agriculture with an equal step. In the application of 
Chemistry to Agriculture, in comparative anatomy and botany, in 
exact experiments, in the institution of model farms, where the most 
important agricultural experiments are carefully going on under 
the supervision of some of the most enlightened men of the age and 
at the expense of the state, and in efforts and provisions to create 
an interest in the art and to extend any information, which is 
acquired ; and especially, by a systematic arrangement and organi- 

* P. Pusey, M. P. 



20 

zation throughout the kingdom, by which agricultural information 
Ls collected from every source, and agam sent out through the 
arteries into every part of the political body, the French nation is 
at this time in advance of all others. 

American Agriculture though comparatively in its infancy, having 
always had to struggle with the difficulties of no capital and high 
prices of labor, may nevertheless regard itself with a good deal of 
satisfaction. The earliest publication on American Agriculture was 
made in 1760 ; and Eliot's Essays on Field Husbandry will be 
read with interest and instruction for ages to come. Massachusetts, 
Pennsylvania, and New York early established agricultural societies, 
offered liberal premiums for successful experiments in agriculture, 
and held cattle shows and ploughing matches, which have awakened 
a strong interest and created a most salutary competition. These 
three states, in the reports and memoirs of their agricultural 
societies, have given to the public more than twenty three volumes of 
instructive and useful matter. Deane, Lowell and Pickering in 
Massachusetts, Livingston, L. Hommidieu and Hosack in New York, 
Peters, Mease, Lorain and Powell in Pennsylvania, Stiles and 
Humphreys in Connecticut are names which are destined, without 
prejudice to any of their distinguished contemporaries or successors, to 
occupy the highest niches of honor in the records of American 
Agriculture. 

It would not be just to pass in silence, the early pioneers in agri- 
cultural improvement connected with the periodical press, Skinner, 
and the distinguished and lamented Fessenden and Buel, to whom 
the country owes a heavy debt of gratitude and honor for their 
intelligence, pubhc spirit and usefulness. The agricultural press 
among us is singularly active, illuminating the whole national 
horizon with its brilliant coruscations ; or rather, should I not say, 
its steady, condensed and glowing light. The Albany Cultivator 
under its late lamented editor and a successor equally worthy, the 
Farmer's Register in Virginia, and the New Hampshire Visitor, 
without disparagement to the singular ability with which many 
other lights are kept burning, would do honor to any country. 

The geological and other scientific surveys which have been con- 
ducted with much learning and ability in Massachusetts, Maine, 
Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Indiana, and Michigan, 
and still in progress in New York; New Hampshire and 



21 

Virginia, have developed a large amount of information, the practical 
bearing of which upon Agriculture must prove extremely beneficial. 
Massachusetts has the honor of having first instituted an agricultural 
survey. Notwithstanding the difficulties of an undertaking al- 
together novel and undefined, and of proceeding single-handed in 
an enterprise so arduous, without experience, or counsel or aid, my 
convictions of the utility of the undertaking have been strengthened 
by its prosecution. While I have had the highest satisfaction in the 
repeated expressions of approbation from gentlemen both in this 
country and abroad, whose good opinion is above all price, I trust 
I shall be pardoned for adding that the course of inquiries instituted 
and the prosecution of those inquiries with the publication of their 
results have given in the state an impulse to agricultural inquiry and 
improvement and an exactness to agricultural experiment and 
observation which have been and must continue to be productive of 
the best effects. 

The Agriculture of the country has been singularly benefitted by 
the public-spirited introduction of the best live stock from Europe. 
Col. Humphreys of Connecticut and Chancellor Livingston of New 
York made the first importation of Merino sheep into the country as 
early as 1802. Messrs. George and Thomas Searle of Boston brought 
the Saxony into the country in the year 1824. Other gentlemen 
followed in similar importations, and when the destined extent of 
this interest is considered, it is difficult to say how they could have 
conferred a greater benefaction upon the country. Besides the 
distinguished importations of improved neat stock in Ohio and 
Kentucky by companies, many private gentlemen of fortune have, 
"vtith a commendable public spirit, embarked in the importation of 
the finest live stock, both cattle and sheep, which Europe affords. 
Van Rensellaer and Coming of New York, Powell of Pennsylvania 
and Cushing of Massachusetts have in this way conferred most 
eminent benefactions upon the country. The latter gentlemen, 
with a liberality as distinguished as his mercantile success and 
honor, has not only imported the best stock, but gratuitously distributed 
them among the farmers. This generous appropriation of large 
amounts for purposes of agricultural improvement in the most dis- 
interested manner silence all envy of his splendid fortune ; and 
entitle him to the high honor and respect with which his fellow 
citizens regard him. Among individuals of more humble means but 



22 

of a spirit of improvement worthy of the largest fortune, Bement ol 
New York, Townsend of Connecticut and Jaques of Massachusetts 
deserve the most honorable mention. The latter gentleman has just 
claims to the honor of the first systematic attempt in the country at 
forming a dairy stock of the most valuable properties. I might cite 
other honored names, who have united their liberal contributions to 
these public-spirited enterprises ; and I refer with singular pleasure 
to Henry L. Ellsworth, Commissioner of Patents, \vho, in his zeal 
to promote an improved Agriculture, has collected and distributed 
large amounts of valuable seeds through the states ; and conunenced 
the establishment of an agricultural museum at the seat of govern- 
ment upon a plan of the highest utility to the country. 

These and various other circumstances, which the time does not 
permit me to refer to, give strong encouragement to the friends of 
an improved Agriculture. Happy for us that in this matter we can 
unite without distinction of political party or religious sect ; and in 
a case where all rivalry and competition are excluded, excepting 
that which may be pursued with perfect good will to all ; and which 
must result in the common benefit. 

The dependance of Agriculture upon the mechanic arts is obvious 
to every one ; and mechanical genius in our own country has already 
made many liberal contributions. The Cotton Gin of Whitney, 
when its great results are considered, is the most important and 
valuable instrument ever produced in the agricultural world. The 
cultivation of cotton in the country began in 1787 and in 1792 it is 
gaid the whole amount exported was two bags received at New 
York from Savannah. The cotton gin, by which one man performs 
the work which before required a thousand, gave an impulse acd 
facility to the production of this valuable article by which it has 
risen to its present enormous amount. New York may claim the 
honor of having given the first cast-iron mould board plough to the 
country, by which a saving is made of full fifty per cent in the 
power of draught required, and great advantages gained in the 
facility with which repairs can be made. Wood's plough is still 
deservedly valued through the country. The improvements made 
on its construction, by Minor in your own state, by Howard, Prouty 
and Mears, Ruggles, Nourse and Mason, and others in Massachusetts 
and other parts of the countr>', have carried it to a high degree of 
perfection. The capital plough of Davis of Maryland, now rarely 



23 

to be seen, for ease oi draught and excellence of work for old fields, 
is within my knowledge unsurpassed. In comparison of our own 
with the best Scotch and English ploughs, which I have seen in 
this country, though I have found nothing which equals the mould 
board of Small, constructed as it is upon the most philosophical 
principles, for the ease with which it enters and inverts the sward, 
yet, in the hands of a good ploughman, the work done by our ploughs 
is as good as any, and the facility with which they are managed 
incomparably greater than the Scotch ploughs. In skill in plough- 
ing and neatness and precision in executing the work, we are at 
present very far behind the English and Scotch. The advantages 
of a division of labor, as where a ploughman is always a plough- 
man, and the extraordinary expertness and exactness acquired by 
early training and the concentration of the faculties and ambition 
to a single point, are here most obvious. For threshing we have 
many admirable machines, and in comparison with a Scotch machine 
which I have seen, said to have been constructed after the best 
model, in amount of work which they will perform in a given time 
several of ours are not inferior ; and in the power required for its 
execution, the expense of the instrument, and the facility of its 
transportation from place to place, ours have greatly the advantage. 
This may not be an unsuitable place to refer to a beautiful con- 
trivance in rural economy presented at your annual exhibition by 
one of your associates, in the construction of a bee hive. The 
hive of John Sholl of this city combines superior advantages at a 
small expense. By the uniform temperature it is intended to pre- 
serve in the hive in summer and winter it provides effectually for 
the health of the colony. It obviates to a degree the necessity of 
swarming and allows the young to remain at home with the old 
folks. It is in a great measure secure against the attacks of that 
too often fatal enemy the bee-moth ; and is easy, withal, of transporta- 
tion, v^th its tenants enclosed, to any distance. It allows you to 
take the surplus honey in the purest state for your taste ; and 
abandons the savage system, so many years practised against these 
industrious laborers, of piracy and murder. It would seem in this 
case to have other advantages in respect to these exemplary insects, 
since, as if acquiescing in the non-resistant principles of the sect, 
to which the ingenious inventor belongs, the bees permit him to 
handle them and go among them with perfect impunity. 



24 

This invention and the excellent hive of Weeks of Vermont and 
other valuable ones for a similar purpose in other states, will have 
some importance in your regard, when I state the fact, that a farmer 
in Maine the last year, from his honey and hives and swarms is said 
to have realized no less than a thousand dollars. 

We have various other agricultual machines well adapted to our 
purposes. Having the advantages of the improvements of other 
countries in their best models, the ingenuity of our mechanics will 
soon enable them to meet the demands of the community. Indeed 
the progress already made in the mechanic arts among us, as is 
seen at your own splendid exhibitions, encourage the promise of 
distinguished benefits yet to result to Agriculture from their aid. 

To these circumstances we may add others, which are ominous of 
eminent good. Hitherto, to a considerable degree, agricultural labor 
and pursuits have been regarded as servile and degrading ; or, from 
the small gains which they are supposed to offer, have been con- 
temned and abandoned for the glittering accumulations which 
presented themselves in other departments of business, and especially 
in trade and commerce. It will be seen likewise upon observation 
that most of our legislators and public men in many parts of the 
country, almost to the exclusion of the agricultural class, have been 
selected from the profession of the law, which has thus got to be 
considered the turnpike road to political preferment. This is not 
perhaps extraordinary ; for the legal profession being the principal 
talking profession, and a large portion of our legislative business, 
as at present conducted, consisting of mere talk, it is natural that 
they should be preferred for this object. Agriculture has therefore 
presented no lures to political ambition. At the same time I should 
be doing the greatest injustice to all the learned professions, if I did 
not say that, both in the legislature and out of it among the enlight- 
ened men of these professions. Agriculture has found some of its 
most able advocates and best practical examples. This has de- 
monstrated the advantages of intelligence and science when applied 
to this art, since in such hands, when united as it frequently 
happens with a strong passion for rural pleasures and pursuits, the 
art has invariably been found in its most improved condition. 

In various respects public opinion, that mighty despot of human 
life and raannei-s, is evidently undergoing a healthful change. 
Labor, actual personal labor, is becoming respectable. When a 



25 

few more of the light-fingered gentry of Europe, who have sped 
their way to our shores, and others of the same class among our- 
selves, who through greater modesty commit their robberies on the 
industrious classes under at least the cover of legal forms, not less 
robbery however for being thus protected, find their proper level in 
society, labor, honest useful labor, whether of body or mind will 
come to be duly honored. That labor, by which a man benefits not 
only himself but the community, if proper intelligence be joined 
with it, will be regarded as giving the strongest claims to its honors, 
privileges, and blessings. The history of the trading community, 
likewise, for the last few years, with its fluctuations, losses, derange- 
ments and bankruptcies, with its sudden accumulations and sudden 
and dreadful reverses, creates a reasonable distrust, whether the 
actual gains of trade with their various risks, uncertainties and tempta- 
tions are to be preferred to, whether in fact they are so great, as 
the gradual but certain and honest gains of an improved agri- 
culture. The charming and serene quiet of a house where books 
and work and healthful play divide the hours, where no changes of 
foreign markets, nor rise and falling of fancy stocks, nor bank con- 
tractions and expansions, nor notes payable and discounts curtailed, 
disturb the sleep, and chances of bargains and opportunities of 
overreaching do not trouble the conscience nor betray the integrity, 
is at least some compensation for daily toil and homely habitations. 
The hard bed may bring vdth it a sweeter repose than a couch of 
down ; and even the pine torch of a log-cabin may often shed a 
more cheerful light upon its unambitious inmates than the astral 
lamps and the burnished mirrors, glittering with the concentrated 
rays of the purest gas-lights upon the ephemereal butterflies and 
birds of paradise of many a city palace. As to political ambition, 
I cannot desire that rural life should be corrupted by its presence ; 
yet I think the time is not distant, when, if the farmers are true to 
their own minds, the agricultural estate will, as in our mother 
country, have its full share of political influence. The publi^^ will 
feel that their national and social interests may be as safel}- trusted 
to intelligent men, who have every thing at stake in thp soil, who 
know the value of labor as an element of national wealth and 
happiness, and whose profession obliges them to haWts of reflection 
and caution, as to so large a proportion of other descriptions of 
men, who bang more loosely on the state, wheiher taken from the 
3 



26 

legal bar ; or, as it sometimes unfortunately happens, from the bar 
of justice and the bar room. Public opinion, as I have said, pro- 
raises to give to the agricultural profession its proper place. We 
do not desire its elevation to the disparagement of any other honest 
calling, for there are innumerable callings as honest and as useful ; 
but, that the agricultural profession may be so regarded that the 
young, if not allured to it by its substantial attractions, may at least 
not be repelled from it by any false pride ; by any fear of losing 
caste ; and any want of that self-respect and that spirit of personal 
independence, which belongs only and always, to such men in any 
condition of life, as are the makers of their own fortunes, and get 
their living by the faithful and upright use of the faculties of body 
or of mind, with which their Creator has endowed them. 

The agricultural interest has a just claim upon the fostering 
and protecting care of the government. I am not able to discover 
how the economy of a government differs in any respect from the 
economy of a well-ordered family. The highest rule in domestic 
economy, is for a family as far as possible, to supply from within 
itself its own wants ; and suffer itself to be as little as possible de- 
pendent upon others. Debt and dependence are in most cases only 
other names for slavery ; a slavery oftentimes more painful and de- 
grading than African servitude. There is no element of character 
more ennobling in itself or more conducive to virtue and to the pro- 
gressive development and exertion of all the faculties of a human 
being, than a conviction of his own capacity to provide for himself. 
There is no domestic harmony more beautiful or less likely to be 
disturbed, than where in a united family labor is divided, and the 
different parties are engaged in supplying the various wants of each 
other. While they cultivate a spirit of good will towards their 
neighbors, they have no dread of their neighbor's displeasure lest he 
might abridge their comforts ; and no cringing and servile depen- 
dance upon his power and caprice in the supply of their wants. 
This system of internal supply, if I may so denominate it, consti- 
tutes ix^ most respects the best system of domestic education. Educa- 
tion, in Ihe highest sense, is not so much the acquisition of know- 
ledge as teaching and preparing the mind, and stimulating and de- 
veloping its capacities to acquire knowledge for itself. In a family 
where the grea\ duty taught is self reliance, every power is called 
into action and txi expertness is acquired in the use of our facul- 



27 

ties, which oftentimes surprises ourselves from the faciUty with 
which they operate, and the diversity and usefulness of their results. 

I know that it is the tendency of all men to push their theories 
to an extreme ; admitting the qualifications which this may suggest, 
I proceed to say that political economy does not essentially differ 
from domestic economy ; and a nation should make itself indepen- 
dent by providing within itself for its own wants. That nation is 
rich, which has no favors to ask of others. That nation, in a moral 
view, is signally favored, whose industry is protected and stimulated 
in every useful form for the common benefit. She creates within 
herself continually new and new power and is ever advancing in 
dignity, in wealth, and in all the elements, which constitute true 
national greatness and glory. It may happen that the actual cost 
or expense of supplying our own wants from our own resources 
may in some things be greater than to purchase the same surplies 
from others. But neither is national prosperity nor family pros- 
perity to be measured by a merely pecuniary standard ; but by its 
own internal and independent resources and abilities for the supply 
of its own wants, comforts and luxuries. The government is bound, 
therefore, upon every principle of wise and sound policy, to foster 
the national industry, agricultural and mechanical, in ever) form in 
which it is directed to a good and useful end. 

Of the various special means within its power to encourage its 
agricultural industry and improvement, I have nri time to speak 
and do even the shadow of justice to the sublet. It is singular 
that this great interest is not made an objec<^ of the special care of 
the government, and that there is no coHs^tant or particular provi- 
sion for its improvement and suco-ss. The first object of the 
government should be to collect snd difRise exact and full informa- 
tion in relation to it, and for that reason a department of Agricul- 
ture should be specially maintained at the seat of government, 
whose object should be to promote its interests, and with liberal 
appropriations to assist its inquiries. A similar department should 
exist in every state. The actual condition of its Agriculture should 
be, from time to time, ascertained by authority and spread before 
the public. The Commissioner of Patents, has made an excellent 
beginning in this matter ; and his public spirited enterprise should be 
seconded in every part of the country. The collection of agricul- 
tural information, correspondence at home and abroad, so as to take 
advantage of every discovery and improvement, the obtaining of 



28 

seeds and plants of a rare or improved character and their distribu- 
tion, and thf collection of models of useful machines, tools and in- 
ventions for facilitating agricultural labor, with an infinite variety 
of other matters pertaining to the subject, would constitute an ex- 
tensive business and prove eminently useful. 

It has been suggested that a National Agricultural Society should 
be formed, which should hold annual meetings for discussing this 
great subject and for the other usual purposes of such associations. 
But our countiy is too large for this. It spreads over too wide a 
territory to expect ever that such meetings should be generally at- 
tended. If anything of this kind were attempted it would be more 
expedient to divide the country into four great agricultural districts 
with an association in each, which would be likely to operate with 
effect. It is doubtful, however, whether any associations so exten- 
&ve could be managed to advantage. I have the most decided con- 
victions, founded upon long experience and observation, of the value 
of stale associations for agricultural objects, and for the purpose of 
holding annual cattle shows or fairs ; and especially when these 
societies ar^ endowed, as they most certainly should be, by the 
liberality of ttip state with the means of bestowing respectable pre- 
miums On successful discoveries, experiments and improvements. 
Town associations should be formed with libraries of agricultural 
publications, lor discussion and reading ; and in no state should the 
friends of an impiQved agriculture cease their exertions and impor- 
tunities until state a»(J county societies are instituted and liberally 
endowed with the mear.s of bestowing substantial honors on the de- 
serving. The State of Mi»sshthusetts for several years has appro- 
priated from five to eight thous^ind dollars for the direct encourage- 
ment of its Agriculture. This, after all, is a mere pittance ; but it 
has been of immense advantage. K^ver has seed been sown that 
has yielded or promises to yield a more abundant or more profitable 
crop. The States of New York and Pennsylvania could aflbrd to 
give their ten, and their fifty thousands to these objects, and this 
•would be abundantly returned to them. 

Your own magnificent state, Citizens of New York, ought to 
take the lead in this noble enterprise. Your agriculture is one of 
the great interests of the country and must continue so as long as 
your extraordinary natural advantages and internal improvements 
continue, and extend themselves. 
The Institution, which I have the honor to address, has for its^ 



2$ 

objects the encouragement of agricultural and mechanical industry. 
Your exhibitions and trials of ploughs have done you great honor. 
Their continuance will quicken throughout the country the impulses 
of genius and art j diffuse useful knowledge to a wide extent ; 
awaken powers of usefulness which would otherwise lie dormant ; 
and be of pre-eminent service to to your state and country. I . 
know no institution adapted to more useful ends or more deserving 
the encouragement of the enlightened and patriotic. The central 
position in which it is established, rendering it accessible to all 
parts of the country, and holding as it does an immediate and easy 
commerce with the old world, and necessarily concentrating a large 
amount of talent of a practical as well as of an intellectual charac- 
ter, give your institution permanent advantages over any other 
position in the Union. 

In France the government of the country has instituted several 
agricultural schools, or schools of useful and practical arts and 
sciences, and established model farms. I hope our state and national 
governments will from their example perceive the immense import- 
ance of these institutions. I see as much reason for the establish- 
ment of national agricultural schools and schools of the practical 
arts as for the establishment of national military and naval schools ; 
and we may congratulate the friends of practical education, that 
through the extraordinary liberality of a distinguished foreigner, 
the government have already ample unused funds for education, 
which cannot be better appropriated than to these objects. 

The interest which I feel in this subject is so strong that, had I 
the powers of an unrivalled eloquence, they should be used in urg- 
ing the elevation of the rural and laboring classes. This is only to 
be done by education, intellectual, moral education. This is the 
Archimedean lever, which is to raise the world. 

The importance of science to the improvement of Agriculture is 
so great that on this account, we should seek to educate the rural 
classes. But on their own account also, that we may refine and 
elevate their taste ; that we may increase the attractions of their 
homes, and strengthen their attachments to their country ; that we 
may give them resources for pleasure and mental improvement in 
hours and days of leisure and in the evening of advanced age ; that 
we may multiply the incentives to good morals by increasing thtir 
self-respect and advancing their occupation and condition to its 
proper dignity, we should seek to extend and continually to increase 



30 

among them the advantages of education. Nothing can more 
effectually contribute to this than the establishment of that system 
of free schools already existing in 'your own state and in New 
England ; and by seeking constantly to elevate the character and 
enlarge the course of studies at these institutions. The patronage 
. of the government, if in this respect, it were a hundred or a thou- 
sand fold greater than it is, could not be more wisely bestowed. 

Gentlemen of the American Institute, Honored as I have been 
by your invitation to address you, I feel myself even more obliged 
by your indulgence on this occasion. I have very imperfectly met 
my own wishes ; and I can have little expectation therefore that I 
have answered yours. The subject is far too extensive for such a 
discussion as this evening allows. But I cannot quit the occasion 
"without congratulating you upon the prospects of our privileged 
country in all that is truly valuable in the social condition of man- 
kind. In the conditions of society in the old world, among those 
who call themselves civilized, men are as much divided into castes 
as in the servile provinces of Hindostan. The doom of the 
laboring classes is fixed and they cannot rise above it, but as they 
escape from their country. In our blessed country men are what 
they make themselves by their talents, education, and morals. Let 
us guard this beautiful element in our social condition, seen first 
and only in American society, as the great security of freedom and 
the certain spring and foundation of virtue and happiness. Men 
must be thrown upon their own resources that their talents 
may be brought out, and have an open field for their use and de- 
velopment They must feel their personal responsibility to themselves 
and to society in order to feel themselves men. In the hands of 
men thus trained liberty will always be safe. In crowded cities, 
breathless in the accumulation of mere wealth as the great end of 
life, liberty may often be bartered for a mess of pottage, or perish 
in the lap of sensual indulgence. Amid political strifes and the 
struggles of ambition it may become a stifled victim in the clutches 
of party. The enlightened and virtuous yeomanry of the country, 
alike removed from the enervating fever of unbridled avarice and 
sensuality, and the violent contests of political ambition, will guard 
the sacred fire in its warmth and brightness. They will hold it 
dear as their lives, because with them it involves all that is worth 
living for ; and transmit it unexhausted and undimmed to those, 
who come after them. 



APPENDIX. 



NOTE A. 



AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS. 

The publication of the returns of the census of the United States is looked for 
■with great interest. In the mean time I avail myself of some notices on this subject, 
which have appeared since the delivery of the Address, in the public press. Mistakes 
in copying large numbers are so easily made, that we cannot look at the returns in 
this case, without a degree of distrust. That the State of New York, for example, 
should produce seventy millions pounds of maple sugar is a very surprising fact, not 
absolutely incredible but requiring to be well authenticated in order to be received. 
In the table in the Cultivator for May however it is put down at ten millions. I 
shall give both tables persuaded that imagination or carelessness may have had some- 
thing to do in both. 

" The largest wheat growing state in the union is Ohio, the amount 16,000,000 
bushels ; the next largest Pennsylvania with 13,000,000 ; the next New York with 
11,000,000 ; and the fourth Virginia with 10,000,000. The largest amount of Indian 
corn raised in one state is in Tennessee, 42,000,000 of bushels; Virginia 34,000,000; 
Ohio 33,000,000; Indiana 28,000,000 ; Illinois 22,000,000; Alabama 18,000,000 ; 
Georgia 17,000,000; Missouri 15,000,000. 

New York is the greatest potatoe growing state, amount 30,999,000 bushels; 
Maine next with 10.000,000 ; Pennsylvania 8,000,000. 

The greatest cotton growing states are Mississippi 289,000,000 pounds ; Ala- 
bama 240,000,000 ; Georgia 148,000,000 ; South Carolina 134,000,000; Tennessee 
128,000,000; Louisiana 87,000,000 , Arkansas 23,000,000; Virginia 10,000,000. 

Louisiana is of course the largest producer of sugar 249,000,000 pounds; New 
York comes next with 70,000,000 pounds, the produce of our own forests. 
Tennessee is first in swine, number 2,795,000. Ohio next with 2,000,000. 
New York stands first for wool ; next Ohio, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Virginia. 
Tennessee again stands first in tobacco, amount, 26,000,000 pounds ; Maryland 
18,000,000 : Virginia 14,000,000. The returns from Kentucky not obtained. 

New York stands first for lumber, value $3,788,000; next Maine $1,808,000. 
For products of the orchard, New York stands first, value $1,732,000. For pro- 
ducts of the dairy, New York 18 again at the head, value $10,000,000; Vermont 
next $4,892,000. 



APPENDIX. 



AGRICULTURAL CENSUS OF NEW YORK, 
From the Cultivator. 



Horses and Mules, 


476,115 


Tons of Hay, - 


3,160.915 


Neat Cattle, 


2,202.128 


Pounds of Cocoons, - 


2.103 


Sheep, .... 


5,:i^l,225 


" Sugar, 


10,092,991 


Swine, .... 


1,916,954 


Cords of Wood sold, - 


1,085,048 


Poultry of all kinds, estima- 




Value of the produce of the 




ted value, - 


$2,372,029 


Dairy, 


10.497,032 


Bushels of Wheat, - 


11.852,507 


Value of produce of Orchard 


1,722.357 


^" Barley, 


2,498,170 


Gallons of Wine made. 


14,710 


" OaU, 


20,728.7;}8 


Value of home made or fa- 




" Rye, 


2,984,913 


mily goods, - $16,335,073 


" Buckwheat, 


2.244.438 


Value of Nurseries and Flo- 




" Indian Corn, - 


10,0-5,142 


rists, - - . . 


75,500 


Pounds of Wool, 


14,093,134 


Value of produce of market 




" Hops, 


362,752 


garden, ... 


465,309 


Wax, 


184.021 


Number of persons employ- 




Bushels of Potatoes, - 


30,000,508 


ed, .... 


525 


Founds of Tobacco gather'd 


6,567 


Capital invested, 


, $258,608 



AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS OF MASSACHUSETTS, 



As Reported to the Valuation Committee, 1840. 



Acres of tillage land, includ- 
ing orchards tilled, - 259,033^ 
Bushels of Wheat, - - 101,178 
Rye,- - - 453,705i 
OaU,- - - 1,226,300' 

" Indian Com, - 1,775,703^ 

Barley, - - 149,004 

Pounds of Hops, - - 237,941 

Tons of Hemp,- - - 7 

Flax. - - - 2 

" Broom Corn, - 580^ 
Acres of English and upland 

mowing, - - 440,930 
Tons of Hay, yearly produce 

of the same, - - 467 ,537^ 

Acres of fresh meadow, - 184,822i 
Tons of Hay, yearly produce 

of the same, - - - 135,930^ 

Acresof salt marsh, - - 39,305| 
Tons of Hay, yearly produce 

of the same, - - 26,202| 
Acres of pasturage including 

orchards pastured, - 1,210,154 
Cows, the same wU keep 

with the after feed of 

the farm, - - - 263,560 



Acres of woodland exclusive 
of pasture land enclosed, - 

Acres of unimproved land, - 
" land unimprovable, 
" land used for roads, 
" land covered with 
water. - - . - 

Whole quantity of land re- 
turned, acres, 

Horses one year old and up- 
ward, - - . - 

Mules and Asses one year 
old^wid upward, - 

Oxen four year old and up- 
ward, - - . - 

Cows three year old and up- 
ward, - - - - 

Steers and heifers one year 
old and upward, - 

Sheep six mouths old and 
upward, 

Swine six months old and 
upward, 

Amount of real estate doom- 
ed, - - - - 

Amount of personal estate 
doomed. 



729.792 

955,2831 

360,278i 

90,074 

157,524 

4,491,8121 

60,030 

117 

46,584 

143,591 

88,562 

343,390 

90,335 

73.378,837 

43;861,305 



NOTE B. 

The Newark Advertiser says that fifteen years ago, a farm in Western New York 
of 400 acres, exhausted by bad husbandry, was bougfit by a Scotch farmer for 
$4,000. This farm has been so improved by good husbandry, that the owner wa» 
last year offered for it $40,000. He refused the offer on th« ground that it had 
actually netted him $60,000. 



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